Davalynn Spencer: Corn, cows and freedom

Posted:
07/03/2014 10:22:20 AM MDT

Davalynn Spencer

My farmer father threw a cob-and-rind party on the Fourth of July one year when I was a kid. He grew the corn and the watermelons, set up a big black kettle in the backyard over a fire pit and invited everyone from our small church and anyone else who cared to attend.

No silverware allowed, plastic or otherwise.

Each person shucked his own corn and tossed the cob in the kettle to cook.

But the best part was eating watermelon by hand and lapping up warm butter that dripped from sweet kernels and down your chin. By the end of the day, fingers and faces were sticky.

A few ladies brought dessert and soft drinks, and I didn't know enough then to know we'd just had ourselves the best Fourth of July vegetarian party possible.

We weren't even vegetarians. Dad raised the beef for our table. Maybe that first year had been a bad one, I don't remember. But cob and rind caught on and came around every summer after that.

And then I grew up, got married and learned about the other Fourth of July: Cowboy Christmas.

Cowboy Christmas is a two-to-three-week period in June and July when there are more rodeos bunched up in small towns across America than at any other time. With several performances for each rodeo, contestants can drive or fly to a dozen, depending on their event. However, my Cowboy usually hit just one rodeo over the Fourth because as the bullfighter, he hung around for every performance and then some.

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The "then some" was always the best part, particularly in Red Lodge, Montana, where the Beartooth Mountains loomed in the west and a small airstrip ran parallel to the rodeo grounds.

They didn't serve cob and rind at the Red Lodge Home of Champions Rodeo. Inch-and-a-half thick beef steaks grilled out back of the holding pens by a rodeo committee member were hard to beat after a long weekend of ducking and diving.

Even when it snowed great big fluffy flakes that left me wondering what month it was.

Red Lodge was full of surprises. Like the afternoon our clown mule shimmied under the metal bleachers and wouldn't come out. Or the morning one of our dogs lost a stand-off with a skunk.

Then there was the small-plane pilot who missed the airstrip and crash-landed 100 feet beyond the ancient, wooden grandstands. He managed the feat just as two riders came back from the parade in downtown Red Lodge. One wore baggy pants and face paint, the other sparkly fringed spandex.

It's not every day that the first responders to an accident are a rodeo clown and a trick rider.

Rodeo is a pretty patriotic affair, and every single one we worked started off with a prayer, the posting of the stars and stripes and the national anthem, also known as "Bareback Riders Get Ready." The roping and riding events remind spectators of early-day ranching skills, and many of those same talents are still used today. Other events exist purely for the entertaining contest between cowboy and critter.

We'll be missing those Red Lodge beef steaks this year, though the cob and rind might find its way into our yard while we sit back and enjoy the local fireworks show.

But regardless of what we eat, we'll be thanking God that we can, because the Fourth of July is about a whole lot more than what's on the menu.

While we celebrate our national independence, let's not forget about our personal dependence upon those who still fight for our freedom to eat and live and work and play the way we choose.